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Analyses of recent trends in youth homicide show that juvenile murder rates were relatively stable from 1980 through 1987, followed by a significant increase through the early 1990s, and then an equally significant decrease through the first decade of the new millennium. Nearly all of the increase in youth homicide was due to increases in youth firearm deaths. Over the past two decades, the risk of homicidal death for 14- to 17-year-old African-American youths has been between six and ten times greater than for white youths. In 1997, the known juvenile homicide offending rates for racial...

Analyses of recent trends in youth homicide show that juvenile murder rates were relatively stable from 1980 through 1987, followed by a significant increase through the early 1990s, and then an equally significant decrease through the first decade of the new millennium. Nearly all of the increase in youth homicide was due to increases in youth firearm deaths. Over the past two decades, the risk of homicidal death for 14- to 17-year-old African-American youths has been between six and ten times greater than for white youths. In 1997, the known juvenile homicide offending rates for racial groups (as classified in the U.S. arrest data) were approximately 30 (per million youth ages 10–17) for whites, 34 for American–Indians and Alaskan Natives, 44 for Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 194 for African Americans. These national rates describe the average differences in youth homicide offending for these racial subgroups.